We choose to go to the moon.I can't help but be reminded of the the alchemists, who chose to turn lead into gold. And yet, where they failed, we succeeded. We took a task that, on the surface, is no less impossible than turning lead into gold, and willed it into existence (albeit with billions of dollars and millions of man-hours).
I sometimes wonder if that sort of willpower still exists in the United States today, and I generally conclude that it does not. Imagine if Obama made the following statement:
We choose to be energy independent in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too.Think about the challenge of becoming energy independent in the next decade. It's certainly no harder than putting a man on the moon was in 1962, and arguably more important.** And yet, can anyone here honestly say that we're on track to accomplish this? Have we even accepted the challenge? Is it something that we intend to win?
If so, consider this: Jimmy Carter put solar panels on the roof of the White House. Ronald Regan removed them.
And so, I ask: What can we as individuals do? What should we be doing?
* As all of the Owls in the room will tell you, JFK's "Moon" speech was made at Rice Stadium. The statement immediately before
We choose to go to the moon.was
But why, some say, the moon? Why choose this asour goal? And they may well ask why climb the highest mountain? Why, 35 years ago, fly the Atlantic? Why does Rice play Texas?** Comparing the challenge of putting a man on the moon to that of becoming energy independent, especially as seen through the lens of national security, the latter is clearly more important. Putting a man on the moon was about developing rocketry to prove to the Soviets that we could obliterate them from afar. Because of our energy dependence, we've shipped a huge percentage of our national wealth abroad, toppled democratically elected governments (directly and indirectly), waged wars against peaceful nations, and allied ourselves with nations whose ideologies directly undermine our own. And for all of this, our energy sources are not really any more secure. Energy producing nations still have a head-shot they can fire at anytime.
I should also point out that all of this ignores the political instability that will be brought about as climate change becomes a reality, the amount of habitable landmass decreases, and displaced people are forced to find new homes.
2 comments:
I would actually argue that energy independence is a far easier task than putting a man on the moon. Space-race era technology was all developed specifically for the moon landing, and was years ahead of everything else at the time. The vast majority of viable renewable technology has been in existence for several decades now. Pure and simple it's an issue of cost and government support. I just read an email yesterday from a partner at a firm that has done insanely well betting on some of the big solar companies. He says that cleantech isn't about the technology, it's only about the government support. I tend to agree with this. Solar stocks have done well because of successful government incentives. To put this in perspective, so far the only money promised in the ARRA that has actually made its way into the renewables industry has gone into smartgrid technology. At renewable energy conferences, this is all anyone talks about. Why hasn't stimulus plan money gone to actually develop power generating assets? Wasn't that the point? Beats me. Perhaps corporate lobbies? Oil companies have their thumbs up buttholes on both sides of the aisle.
When it comes down to it, we need to take the Nuclear Bomb approach. Put a bunch of smart people in a room, with a nearly unlimited budget and let them hack it out. Think about the task of splitting an atom and harnessing the energy for evil. That might have been our biggest accomplishment pre-"Small step for man". For energy independence, it's a larger scale task (pun IN-tended). We need to look at a slew of answers and tie them together to ween ourselves off of foreign oil (in my opinion). So we need a lot of different people in different fields (wind, solar, ocean currents), putting together a lot of ideas, and all the while thinking of the global impact of them (why biofuel is NOT the answer). There is no doubt we can be energy independent by 2020, the government has to spend the green to get the right people on it.
My opinion: solar panels ON THE MOON! Oh yeah, just made you shiver a little didn't it?
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